ONE CARD SHORT:

CHAPTER SEVEN - ALMOST STUPIDLY

"Would you just answer that already?"

Written by Gregory Smith

All characters portrayed within are copyright 1996 Kazuki Takahashi,

With the exception of Gradius, who is copyright 2003 Gregory Smith.

"Crap," Jounouchi sighed, handing Anzu's cell phone back to her, frustration smearing his face, "Yugi's not answering his cell." This brought a collective slump of shoulders to the three teenagers, along with accompanying sighs.

"Where do you think he is?" Honda asked, half concerned, half annoyed, "I didn't even see him today!" He hardly ever saw Yugi anymore, but that wasn't really the point. The point was that he wanted to find Yugi and ask him if he knew anything about this purple fog; Yugi had been an unwitting bearer of doomsday on numerous occasions, so it wouldn't have surprised Honda if the new color of the sky was Yugi's fault, too.

"Tch," Jounouchi spat, which was something he'd been doing lately when people mentioned Yugi, "He was probably skipping again." Even Jounouchi at least showed up to school. Some days, Yugi didn't even come. Jounouchi missed the old Yugi; that was the Yugi he felt some sort of attachment to. But lately, Yugi had been distancing himself from everyone, and never had any time to hang out. Anzu was worried and Honda was confused, but Jounouchi … he was downright pissed off.

Anzu sighed, staring at her cell phone. Yugi wasn't going to return their calls, no matter how much they tried; that didn't stop her from redialing his number and trying again. She waited a few seconds, and then heard the familiar ringing. It kept ringing, though. Anzu muttered something under her breath, squeezing the cell phone just a little bit. Yugi never answered his cell phone…

Bee-beep! Bee-beep!

"Would you just answer that already?" Kaiba grumbled, running alongside Yugi, headed towards the museum, "That must be the fifth call you've gotten!" If there was ever trouble dealing with Shadow Games and the like, the answers were disgustingly likely to be at the museum.

"I can't answer my cell phone and run at the same time!" Yugi barked back, netting a little moment of shock from Kaiba, "I'll trip myself up! I'll call them back when we get to the museum!" Yugi Mutou, winner of almost every major Duel Monsters event in recent history, couldn't answer a cell phone while running.

Kaiba smirked, almost stupidly.